A Hot Soul
by jameshawking
Summary: Did he really think it so funny, to ask the genetic experiment to create a perfect man?


Disclaimer: I own no characters presented here, and they are the property of their respective creators.

There are these moments, few and rare as they are, that she simply feels as if she cannot measure up to the task which she was given. They are never pleasant, never kind, and it is in these she finds the fact that, despite being designed to be perfect, that she never quite hits that mark. She knows that she'll likely live half again the normal span of a human, and she knows that she'll likely live four or five times as long as her current patient will, if she's successful to begin with. She knows that if anyone could, if anyone would, finish the Lazarus project it would be Cerberus and it would be her at its helm, but despite all this knowledge she finds herself up against that void.

The void of not of death but the void, the challenge, of betterment. And in a living creature...almost living creature, it seems like a monumental task. Quite akin to the salarian efforts to modify the genophage, the task of making something already established into something better was an infinitely more complicated task than just creating something to be great. Her own engineering was, to put it mildly, the equivalent of a first grade art project in comparison, and as such she felt rightly terrified, humbled.

But in these seconds, the brief ones she allowed to herself, in her chair that she had kept with her for the entirety of her career at Cerberus (it was a silly thing, but it seemed to swing so much faster when she spun, an homage to the silly childhood she'd never had, the one she had bled for her sister to have) with her door closed and her face hidden from the omnipresent cameras that the Illusive Man demanded there be in every project he ran, she allowed herself to feel the fear of the risk, the weight of the decisions that would be made in the next few years, the importance that each scan would merit. And it was here, alone, that she allowed herself a moment to wonder, to doubt whether or not whether this was a smart thing to do but also whether or not this was a _right_ thing to do.

Shepard had earned his rest. She knew that he was needed...necessary...but could they not let a dead man rest? Were there really no others who could rally this galaxy to defend against the Reapers? He had, in some corner of her, already earned her respect if for no reason other than how he had already thwarted a Geth invasion of the Citadel, how he had destroyed Sovereign, how he had given the galaxy these blessed few years to get themselves together for the defense. Even if he could, possibly, do more did he not deserve his own time? He had gone out like he said he always wanted to, on his ship, saving his crew. Mr. Moreau had been quite adamant about that during the various interviews he'd had with Alliance and Council interests, is debriefings with them and with Cerberus as well.

Beyond that, though, she could feel the real question in the empty space of her mind, prying underneath her thoughts and reasons like a knife under the scales of a Turian. The heavy and insistent footfalls of the real question danced just so far out that she could allow herself to, for twenty-three hours of a day, expressing itself only in the midst of her dreams, easily forgotten by the time she brushed her teeth the next morning (as though oh-four-hundred could be considered "morning" to any sane human being). Could she? Should she, of all people, do this?

More than just the question of reviving him, which she alone could guide, but the question of enhancement was the kicker. When she was first asked to do so she had felt the blood drain from her fingertips and her veins go cold as ice, never before knowing such an aghast horror before. That he...that she...

Did he find it amusing to ask her to do the same to Shepard as she had suffered through her entire life? That thought was immediately dismissed; she knew the Illusive Man wouldn't ask her for the entertainment value. She trusted him and his judgment above her own and put her faith in his insight, in his genius. She would do this for him; she would create another monster for him, for the galaxy itself.

As she ruminates that night, that first night she was in charge of Lazarus, she gives in to the coercive, subtle logic that The Illuminated Man had not actually provided her, that she wrote and provided for him in her mind throughout the day, why he had to have asked this of her, why he needed this done. He had given her full reign for this project, with the mandate simple.

Bring him back, unchanged, and better.

How she was to do was entirely up to her discretion, of course, but the muscles of her arm were too tense for the task of writing the daily reports to her beneficiary. Her face, already stern, would grow a bit glazed and absent, the cold fire diminished, usually as intent as her focus. Maybe, in fact, it was still just as intent. There was, though, one thing that was new, one thing that every project member would notice, in time, Jacob being the first.

Miranda Lawson would never again sit still.


End file.
